Superorganism or Super Predator?

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7,814 views Mar 18, 2023
Join Dr. Peter Carter, Paul Beckwith and Regina Valdez as they discuss “Economics for the future - Beyond the superorganism,” a paper written by Nate Hagens which provides a vital and interesting way of looking at humanity, society, and our economic system.

This video was recorded on March 8th, 2023, and published on March 18th, 2023.

Some of the topics discussed:
- How the paper makes clear that energy, the quality and the ease at which we can extract it, is the key behind our entire civilization.
- The need to recognize that we cannot continue with the exponential growth of the economy and how we are not going to voluntarily step away from this growth. This will lead us to an inevitable crash.
- How, in a resource rich environment, we coordinate in groups, corporations and nations, to maximize financial surplus, tethered to energy, tethered to carbon. At global scales, the emergent result of this combination is a mindless, energy hungry, CO2 emitting Superorganism.
- Lisi Krall also spoke about how agriculture changed humanity forever taking place around 10,000 years ago, and how prior to this transformation, we lived as hunter-gatherers. According to the paper, agriculture actually developed in seven separate locations simultaneously around the world.
- How with today’s economy we act upon the Earth rather than interact with it. How this has changed how we see the Earth making it into a commodification machine continually churning out what we need to the demise of the planet and us.
- How, since the Scientific Revolution, we have progressively separated ourselves more and more from nature very much with a theme of conquest of nature.
- How according to the Carnegie Peace Institute, the global debt now is almost 300 trillion dollars having grown in the past year or two over 300 percent funding a 30 percent rise in global GDP.
- How we still have this basic stone age or lizard-type part of the brain, which actually can dominate the rational part of the brain in times when we're fearful.